World's Greatest Detective
by kalgornthehunter
Summary: Gotham waits for the inevitable power struggle after the events of Arkham City and Joker's death.


_Two years ago, I uncovered Joker's plot to unleash a genetically enhanced army on Gotham. The drug he used to modify his henchmen was called Titan. Before I could stop him, Joker ingested a massive dose of the Titan formula and mutated into a gigantic abomination. I managed to defeat him, but his overdose had devastating side-effects. Joker was dying and he needed a cure. To ensure my cooperation he infected my blood with his own, leaving me no choice but to help him. But that wasn't all. He contaminated Gotham's blood banks too. The result: the patients currently quarantined here. Joker's mutated blood behaves like a prion infection, attacking the brain and transforming these people. . . into him. Unless we find a way to reverse the process, no one will be able to stop what he has unleashed._

*

Gotham was not a place of quiet or calmness. Neither of those were in its nature. The city blared with the sounds of it's nine million citizens busily living out their day-to-day lives both day and night. What seperated Gotham from the rest of the cities like it, was what went on behind closed doors and in hushed voices. It was in those rooms which it's occupants gathered inside of in the light of day with curtains drawn to plot and scheme their plans because they were too afraid to do it at night anymore. In Gotham, darkness was not the ally it used to be to the denizens that wished to do evil. In Gotham, darkness was to be feared.

Robberies, kidnappings, muggings, murders. Every kind of conceivable crime had a consequence to it here that it did not share with other cities like Gotham. All acts outside the law held the same legal consequence. Murder was still murder. Theft was still theft. But here in Gotham, the acts that might have otherwise slipped under the radar of the law, or even through the cracks in that same legal system, did not always walk away unscathed or free for very long. Gotham had a failsafe for those eventualities that was entirely all it's own.

The Batman.

For a city teaming with as many super-criminals and madmen in suits who would shoot you as soon as look at you, Gotham had come to almost rely on vigilante justice more than the actual police department which constantly failed the people when they needed it the most. The most blatant example of the police's shortcomings was barely more than a few months gone now. Whether the GCPD could be held responsible for the events which had taken place in Arkham City was still a matter of debate.

"It was all Quincy! He took the power away from them and gave it all to those TYGER tyrants."

"It was their incompetence that allowed Arkham City to happen in the first place!"

Arkham City, Protocol 10, and all the events that had happened therein had caused a huge fallout in the social order. Just shy of destroying it completely in fact. Hundreds of Blackgate and Arkham prisoners, as well as political prisoners and innocents who had crossed Hugo Strange were imprisoned under inhumane conditions. There had been hundreds killed as a result of Hugo and Ra's al Ghul's regime. They say that hindsight is twenty-twenty and that was the apex of all understatements in this case. As it turned out, Arkham City had only been the start of Hugo's agenda. One which culminated in the mass execution of all Gotham's criminals. A 'worst-case scenario' in case of a breakout, they had called it.

That plan danced a little too far into that moral grey area for some and, as a result, they ended up in there with the rest of the scum as a way of shutting them up. As a means of ensuring the commencement of Protocol 10, Hugo had been smuggling arms into Arkham City. The subsequent proliferation of weapons into the prison populace inevitably caused turf wars between the different gangs of thugs.

By time Batman had managed to shutdown Protocol 10, Hugo claimed to have eliminated twenty-two percent of Arkham City's inmates. The barrage of missiles had caused structural damage throughout that would take years to repair and still years more before this stain would be erased from Gotham, if ever.

In the wake of it all, despite everything, Gotham fell into a strange calmness. Things were quiet. Things were actually going well. Crime was falling, as month after month ticked by, crime continued to fall and things continued to go well.

Batman did not trust it.

It was the unease he was left with in the absence of The Joker. Above all, it was perhaps that alone which had had the greatest effect on him. His nemesis was really gone for good. That struggle against Joker had been one which had been with him ever since he donned the cape and cowl and, now that it was gone, It felt somehow unnatural. Even as his adversaries were systematically released back onto the streets through legal cases for their imprisonment in Arkham City, it was not them that caused him the most trepidation.

No, those released were quickly and easily rounded back up. Most of them, at least. There were still a few names that he had yet to track down. They were the smart ones, hiding and staying out of sight. Most importantly, they were staying quiet. For the time being, Batman was content to waiting for when they inevitably would stick their heads out again. He'd be there when that finally happened. Until then, he could only prepare for whatever would come next.

Until then, he could only focus on getting ready for it, whatever 'it' was. Until then, he could only keep himself distracted to avoid dealing with the unnamed feelings inside him tormenting over the emptiness left behind by The Joker. He would never admit it, but a part of him felt like it was grieving.

He couldn't shake that suspicion. Month after month it would crop back up again and again and everytime it did, the only way he knew to cope with it was to suit up and go punch some bad guys. It was this propensity towards violence as a reaction to these thoughts that had caused such a noticeable change in him. Since Arkham City, there had been plenty of changes, but those changes had never been as displayed out in the open as they were in the specifications for the new Batmobile.

"More guns, Mister Wayne?" Lucius had asked when he saw them after Bruce had revised and sent them over.

"Can you do it?" Was all he responded with. Not unkindly, but he spared Fox the pretend show he put on for almost everyone else.

It had been Lucius who had always pushed Bruce for a more offensively capable Batmobile but Bruce had turned the idea down everytime. Until now.

"Why the change of heart, Mister Wayne?"

Bruce had almost left the room when he paused in front of the door just long enough to say three words.

"Just in case."


End file.
